FRFI 195 February / March 2007
In December 2006, following the defeat of the Republican majorities in Congress and with the critical report of the Iraq Study Group (ISG) pending, there was much speculation in the bourgeois media that the US and Britain would begin to withdraw from Iraq. A US Marine Corp Intelligence Report stated,‘the social and political situation has deteriorated to such a point that US and Iraqi troops are no longer capable of defeating the insurgency’. Colin Powell, President Bush’s ex- Secretary of State admitted the US army was ‘about broken’. Only 9% of the US population believed the war could be won; 70% wanted the new Congress to withdraw troops within six months. Yet, on 10 January President Bush announced he would be sending an additional 21,500 US soldiers. Why did this happen?
The imperialists created the Iraqi government as a democratic veneer for their occupation so as to gain international legality for their oil contracts and other acts of piracy. The puppet government dutifully carried out most of their masters’ demands. For instance, recently Prime Minister Al Maliki asked the United Nations to renew the mandate for the imperialist occupation for a further five years, before the Iraqi parliament had even considered the matter and after the US and Britain had pushed through the motion a month early. However, the problem for the imperialists is that the puppet government cannot unite and lead the country the way they would like. The Iraqi elections exacerbated sectarian fears and even parts of the ‘ruling’ coalition are opposed to the occupation. Moqtada Al Sadr, leader of the Mehdi army, temporarily withdrew his supporters in protest at Al Maliki’s talks with President Bush and is organising an anti-occupation grouping within the Iraqi parliament.
The reality is that the Iraqi government exists only within the heavily fortified Green Zone of Baghdad. Having used militias and sectarian violence to help them terrorise the Iraqi people and divide the resistance, the imperialists found the Iraqi police and army dominated by those militias and incapable or unwilling to take on a national security role and so give some relief to the occupying forces. Andrew Cordesman of the Centre for Strategic International Studies said: ‘To put it bluntly, the US government must stop lying about the true nature of Iraq readiness and Iraqi force development. There are not “more than 100 units” ready but probably less than a third of that.’ Most significantly, the Iraqi people’s resistance to the occupation has continued to grow. Polls show the overwhelming majority of both Shias and Sunnis support attacks on US and British troops and want them out of their country. The massive Operation Together Forward by imperialist and puppet forces in the summer failed to secure Baghdad, leading some in the US military and diplomatic service to suggest that a military solution was not possible. By the autumn the war had cost $400 billion and on 31 December claimed its 3,000th US soldier’s life. Approval of Bush’s handling of the war slumped to a low of 27%.
US ruling class demands changes
Against this background, sections of the US ruling class decided the war could not continue in the same way. It threatened the wider global interests of US imperialism. The resistance of the Iraqi people was, as Colonel Douglas McGregor put it, ‘[exposing] the myth of American military omniscience, of limitless economic resources harnessed to a perpetual “crusade for democracy”’ and was inspiring further resistance to imperialism in Afghanistan, Palestine, Lebanon and Iran. Those behind the ISG were not concerned with the occupation of Iraq, however, only with the fact that the US appeared to be losing. They never intended to provide an exit strategy for US forces. On the contrary, the ISG report asserts the need for ‘considerable military presence in the region with our still significant force in Iraq and with our powerful air, ground and naval deployments in Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar, as well as an increased presence in Afghanistan’. That US forces would stay in Iraq was never in doubt. James Baker, co-chair of the ISG, said, ‘Our report makes clear that we are going to have substantial, very robust residual troop levels in Iraq for a long, long time.’ In fact, the ISG recommended sending an additional 20,000 military ‘trainers’ to Iraq. The ISG understood that any major withdrawal from Iraq would look like a defeat and US imperialism cannot afford to admit any sort of defeat in Iraq because it would undermine its strategy of global economic and political hegemony through overwhelming military might. As Robert Gates, the new Secretary of State for Defence (and an initial member of the ISG), admitted at his swearing-in ceremony, failure in Iraq would be ‘a calamity that would haunt our nation, impair our credibility and endanger Americans for decades to come’.
Blame the Iraqis
The ISG had no new solutions. It recommended withholding US support unless the Iraqi government achieved certain ‘milestones’. Whatever ‘support’ might mean was never made clear. If it meant aid then it had no substance since the majority of the promised reconstruction ‘aid’ has never materialised, or has been squandered by corruption or finished up in the coffers of US multinationals such as Halliburton. If it was a bluff that the US might pull out then, as Strobe Talbot, head of the US Brookings Institute, pointed out, ‘The logic of the pressure tactic is not clear since most of the Iraqis want us out.’
Former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Bzrezinski said the suggestion to hold the Iraqi government to account ‘is based on the pervasive illusion that there is such a thing as the Iraqi government’. The only new suggestion from the ISG was that a solution might be found by involving Iraq’s neighbours, including talks with Syria and Iran. That idea was given short shrift by President Bush even before the report was published.
The purpose of the ISG was to de-fuse the increasing opposition to the war within the US and prevent the growing criticism of President Bush from becoming a political crisis by ‘camouflaging’ a change in direction. That change was to divert political culpability for the disaster onto the Iraqis themselves. The ISG report said ‘the Iraqi people and their leaders have been slow to demonstrate their capacity or will to act’; the implication being that the US must therefore take whatever action is necessary to save the Iraqis from themselves.
So, after appearing dutifully to consider a number of critical reports from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the State Department and the National Security Council as well as the ISG report and then ignoring most of them, Bush has been able to ‘humbly’ admit mistakes and then pose as the resolute statesman, steering his own determined course, escalating the war.
As loyal servants of the ruling class, there was never any possibility that the new Democratic Party majorities in Congress would translate their pre-election rhetoric into anti-war activity. The first acts of the new Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, were to announce a ‘bipartisan’ approach and that there would be no impeachment of the President. Indeed, the Democrats indicated they would be likely to support a request for $97.7 billion to continue the war on Iraq, this in addition to the Pentagon’s $560 billion budget. Pelosi then chose Silvestra Reyes as chair of the Intelligence Committee, who promptly called for the ‘elimination’ of the Iraqi militias. Senate majority leader Harry Reid supported an increase in US forces in Iraq even before they had been announced, albeit for a limited period.
After Bush’s plan became clear Senator Joe Biden, chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, wrung his hands, saying he wasn’t happy with increased troop deployments, but he was powerless to do anything – thus in one sentence exploding the myth of bourgeois democracy. Not a single Democratic senator opposed the appointment of Robert Gates, the ex-CIA official who recommended the bombing of the Sandinista government in Nicaragua and was involved in the Iran-Contra cover-up.
If there is to be any serious opposition it must come from the US anti-war movement, sections of which are planning to occupy the offices of any member of Congress who votes for the war budget.
Imperialism breeds racism
Most sickening of all was the way these despicable apologists for imperialism tripped over each other to follow the lead given by the ISG report and heap blame on the Iraqi people for the imperialists’ predicament. All the racist bile that underpins their politics came surging to the surface.
Senator Evan Bayh said, ‘We all want them (the Iraqis) to succeed. Too often they seem unable or unwilling to do that’. Senator Hillary Clinton said, ‘America’s credibility is being held hostage by the Iraqi government’. Senator Barack Obama, supposedly an opponent of the war, asserted, ‘No more coddling. No more equivocation …The US is not going to hold this country together indefinitely’.
The Democrats were in concert with Republicans and the neo-cons. Republican Congressman Robin Hayes cried, ‘If Iraqis are determined and decide to destroy themselves and their country, I don’t know how in the world we’re going to stop them’. Richard Perle said, ‘We underestimated the depravity of the Iraqis’ and Rumsfeld told the Iraqis they needed ‘to pull their socks up’. If all this seems unreal, take note of the reported comments of one senior Bush advisor (believed to be Karl Rove), ‘We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality’.
Still greater savagery
Unfortunately for the Iraqi people the hidden intention will be only too real. When imperialists start blaming their victims and announce a fresh approach to ‘save the victims from themselves’ it is to justify the unleashing of the most savage barbarity, unrestrained by even a passing recognition of humanity. It is an admission that any attempt to influence ‘hearts and minds’ has been abandoned and terror will reign indefinitely until the people ‘come to their senses’.
It happened in the British colonies; it happened in Vietnam; it happened in Central America. In fact the ‘Salvador Option’, as the US imperialists so flippantly call it, has been partially implemented in Iraq for the last two years, since James Steele, the man who commanded the US military in El Salvador, was drafted in to train Iraqi forces in ‘irregular missions’.
President Bush’s plan is to secure Baghdad by flooding all 23 neighbourhoods of the city with US troops and 31,500 fresh Iraqi forces, probably Steele’s men. They will operate without restraint – death squads, torture, assassination, indiscriminate air strikes. Even the massacres in Najaf and Fallujah, where US forces used white phosphorus against civilians, will pale beside the bestiality to come.
However, no matter what barbarity the imperialists and their stooges perpetrate they will not find progress easy. The ISG report admitted the Mehdi Army has at least 60,000 members. The US orchestrated trial and lynching of Saddam Hussein served only to increase Sunni recruits to the Resistance. When the imperialists last tried to secure Baghdad they were staggered by the reaction. General John Sattler said violence had increased at ‘an unbelievably rapid pace’. Attacks on imperialist forces surged to an average of 180 per day. The Bush plan will involve much house-to-house fighting. Recently 160 US troops were injured trying to clear resistance fighters from just one mile of Haifa Street in Baghdad and this was the sixth time they had had to do so. General George Casey, commander of US forces in the region was sceptical whether the extra troops would make much difference. He has since been replaced.
December 2006 was the deadliest month in the last two years for US troops with 111 killed. No-one knows how many Iraqis are dying because the imperialists have never bothered to count but estimates suggest at least 6,000 suffer violent deaths every month. Yet, one senior White House adviser said 2007 would be much bloodier than 2006 and, in announcing his plan, President Bush admitted 2007 would be ‘a bloody and violent year’, and then had the gall to blame the impending onslaught on the Iraqi people.
Labour, loyal US ally
In Britain, the Labour government’s initial response to the idea of talks with Iran and Syria was positive. A senior Downing Street adviser was dispatched for talks with the Syrians last November. However, in early December the US government told British banks to shut down their Iran operations and back its boycott of the country. Not surprisingly, after a meeting with Bush that same month, Blair had changed his tune and called for Iran to be isolated and ‘(pinned) back across the whole of the region’. Labour Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett welcomed President Bush’s plan to send more troops to Iraq and reassured the US there would be no big pull-out of British troops, although the British are still hoping to withdraw about 1,000 troops from Iraq in the spring to increase their forces in Afghanistan.
Blair said before Christmas, Britain would pay ‘a very heavy price’ if it distanced itself from the US. But sections of the British ruling class, like that in the US, are worried that Britain’s military commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan mean British imperialism’s wider interests are being neglected. The cost of the war in Afghanistan tripled last year and the total cost to Britain for both wars was £1.4 billion. The army is over-stretched, under-strength and lacking adequate equipment. Last year the British army fell below 100,000 for the first time since the Victorian era.
In January Blair launched what he called a national debate about the future of the armed forces, saying the country had to decide whether it wanted to remain a major world power. This means, of course, that he wants big increases in military spending so that Britain can continue to act as a subordinate partner to the US, relying on US military might to police its imperial interests, rather than subsuming Britain into a European military force.
Stealing the oil
The ISG made several recommendations regarding Iraq’s oil. Not surprising, since two of its authors James Baker and Lawrence Eagleburger have had a long-standing relationship with the oil industry; the Baker law firm and family having interests in Amoco, Exxon and Texaco, and Eagleburger having been until recently a director of Halliburton. Both men, when in office in the 1980s, were very active in promoting trade with Iraq as a means of getting at Iraqi oil. Their report called for the US to assist in privatising Iraq’s national oil industry, opening it up to foreign companies and helping to draft a new national oil law for the country. In fact, as the authors were aware, these recommendations are already well advanced, further evidence that the ISG intended to justify rather than reverse US policy in Iraq.
The new oil law was cobbled together last year by Iraqi government officials and representatives of the oil multinationals under the direction of the US consultancy firm Bearing Point Inc. The Iraqi parliament, of course, wasn’t consulted and by November most of members of parliament had not even seen the proposed law. Yet the IMF insisted the law be passed soon, the original deadline being the end of 2006. The IMF also demanded an end to fuel subsidies, the second phase of which, announced in January, will multiply the price of fuel 16 times and so increase the cost of living for the Iraqi people by 20%.
The new oil law will permit foreign companies to enter into production sharing agreements (PSAs), which will allow them effectively to operate as private companies. In the rest of the Middle East and in most of the world oil industries are state owned. The oil multinationals will be allowed to keep 60-70% of revenue while they recoup investment costs and 20% thereafter. These figures are roughly twice the norm for PSAs.
It has been calculated that the new law will allow foreign companies to control up to 87% of Iraqi oil and give a return on investment of between 42% and 162%, representing a theft from the Iraqi people of $200 billion as compared with state ownership. Both BP and Shell are among the companies jostling to take a stake in the carve-up.
However, British and US companies are worried about investing while the security situation in Iraq is so bad. French and Russian companies Total and Lukoil are less worried and hope to get in first. France and Russia initially opposed the invasion and have given little or no support to the occupation so consider their companies less likely targets for the resistance. These strategic economic considerations are what lie behind all the apparent wrangling over war or peace between imperialist rivals at the United Nations. No doubt they also contributed to Bush’s plan for a new military offensive.
Imperialists bunker down
Ali Allawi, former Iraqi minister and adviser to Al Maliki, wrote in January, ‘What we are witnessing in Iraq is the beginning of the unravelling of the unjust and unstable system that was carved out of the Ottoman Empire (by British imperialism). It had held for nearly 100 years by a mixture of foreign occupation, outside meddling, brutal dictatorships and minority rule.’
It is this system that the US and British imperialists are desperately trying to sustain. The US has built four massive military bases at strategic points around Iraq. In Baghdad it is building the biggest embassy in the world, covering 114 acres with walls 15 feet thick. It is six times bigger than the UN buildings in New York. It will be self-sufficient in power and water and have its own swimming pool and military barracks. The ISG report recommended that when it opens in September civilian staff should have their salaries doubled and be offered easy postings afterwards, to ensure they agree to work there. This does not sound like an occupier intending to leave in the near future.
The imperialist forces will try to hammer the Iraqi people into submission and then bunker down in their fortresses to protect their oil and their strategic position. They will never leave until they are forced out.
Victory to the Iraqi resistance!
